Live from HITMC: Beyond the Content Pillar

Beyond the Content Pillar: How to Convert Killer Content into Quality Leads, by Lori Uzzo and Melissa Pickle

A content pillar is a large, meaty asset that can be repurposed in many ways – an ebook, a guide, a webinar. It takes a substantial commitment of content resources.

But there are challenges.

Challenge: Small Teams

Small teams! How do you create big meaty content pillars?

Write a blog post > write a presentation based on that blog post > create a webinar based on the presentation

Consider how the audience shifts from one to the next. Lori found that the webinar had the same job types as the presentation, but it was people who didn’t know about the company, so they needed to make some revisions.

Think about how each item is being promoted, and what the flow is for each.

Social channels, e-blasts, drip campaign to keep people engaged after the webinar

In the month after the webinar they were able to create a case study (based on webinar, based on presentation, based on blog post), and it took only 2 weeks to complete – compared to 3 months for the first webinar.

Challenge: Finding Quality Leads

People are coming in from the website, promotions, events, advertising, etc. The key is to ensure that the deeper someone gets into the cycle, the more personal the content should feel.

Since their sales cycle is about a year and a half, they needed to identify a way to create the right content (and track it!!) to keep people engaged.

They needed to develop a mechanism to track lead generation and show marketing ROI.

How to measure content’s reach:

Outline the marketing-to-sales funnel

When a lead comes into the CRM, capture the lead source

Create campaigns in the CRM and the marketing automation system

As a lead responds to content, it is tied to the campaign affiliated with that content

Customer segmentation should focus on:

Customer interests, needs, struggles

Leads are scored and rated based on demographics + engagement

For example, a lead who fills out a form has a higher level of interest/engagement than a lead who just visits the website

Demographics might include job title, affiliations, etc.

Takeaways

For each new piece of content, reevaluate the audience and rework with that audience in mind.